The BBC will be forced to rein in fat cat salaries, its creeping commercial activities and internet empire under radical Tory plans to prevent Britain becoming a ‘one broadcaster state’.

Conservative culture spokesman Jeremy Hunt said that the corporation would be required to restrict its ambitions to ‘core broadcasting’ if the Tories win the next election.

Mr Hunt, in an interview with the Daily Mail, suggested discussions over the future of the licence fee would hinge on the BBC agreeing to dramatically scale back activities that are forcing out commercial competitors.

BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, limited to promoting products overseas. Parts of it could be sold off

Dominant online presence scaled back

Channels with low audiences, such as BBC3 and BBC4, could be scrapped

The proposals come after a spat between the BBC and Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw.

Mr Bradshaw warned earlier this week that the BBC had probably expanded
far enough and raised the possibility of the ruling BBC Trust being
replaced by an external regulator.

Director-general Mark Thompson hit back last night, accusing him of
political meddling and a ‘frankly puzzling’ attack on the BBC Trust.

‘To threaten them with imminent or creeping abolition when they take a
different view from you is not in keeping with the tradition of
political independence on which the whole of British public
broadcasting is based,’ he said.

Changes: Ben Bradshaw has raised the possibility of replacing the BBC Trust

A defiant BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons insisted: ‘We are here to do a job and we will continue to do that job of re-shaping the BBC and protecting its independence.’

Mr Hunt’s intervention raises the stakes in the debate over the future of the BBC.

He warned that there was now a ‘real danger’ of it crowding out competitors.

‘We would certainly make clear our concerns over the scope of the BBC’s commercialactivity in any discussions over its future, for example decisions over the licence fee settlement,’ he said.

‘We would want a clear understanding of how the BBC was going to rein in its commercial activities.

‘Do we want the BBC to do less good quality, family entertainment? No, we don’t.

'But do we want the BBC to constrain its ambitions beyond that core broadcasting? Absolutely.

‘We are now in a situation where licence fee income is likely to be £1billion more than the combined income of all the commercial broadcasters. We don’t want to become a one broadcaster state.’

Mr Hunt suggested parts of BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s commercial arm, would have to be sold off.